Pat Buchanan compares Al Gore to Birther movement

Extreme right wing commentator Patrick Buchanan thinks global warming is a hoax and that Al Gore is like the Birthers.

This is a couple of days old but still worthy of review. Pat Buchanan, noted racist and political talking head, launched into a diatribe about how global warming is a hoax while he was on Hardball with Chris Matthews. To his credit, he at least thinks Al Gore believes in global warming, but dismisses him as deluded while comparing him to the Birthers, the small but vocal sect of the Republican Party most recently found at congressional town hall meetings holding up their birth certificates and shrieking.

Pat has things backwards. His side of the argument (and it's a stretch to even call it an argument) denies the very clear truth of manmade global warming. They plug their fingers in their ears and sing the national anthem really loud when confronted with the overwhelming evidence that our globe is indeed becoming warmer and that it's doing so in step with the rise in emissions of man-made greenhouse gases.

Global warming creationists like Mr. Buchanan are the ones who are like the Birthers, who scoff at decades-old birth announcements, birth certificate abstracts (the piece of paper the state of Hawaii issues certifying that it has your birth certificate on record), and a statement from the state's Republican governor that our president was, in fact, born in Hawaii.

It's an old trick that's well played by the right side of the political spectrum — label your enemy as the opposite of what they are. If they are blue, call them orange; if he believes in common-sense policy to a large problem based on scientific consensus, compare him to a group of crazy extreme right-wingers with a racist bent lead by a lawyer/dentist/real estate agent named Orly Taint.

Shea Gunther ( @sheagunther ) is a podcaster, writer, and entrepreneur living in Portland, Maine. He hosts the popular podcast "Marijuana Today Daily" and was a founder of Renewable Choice Energy, the country's leading provider of wind credits and Green Options. He plays a lot of ultimate frisbee and loves bad jokes.